A progressive voice from the Carolinas, featuring views, news, and dialogue that the corporate media doesn't. In the Mountains of Western North Carolina, Mills River is a rural community about 20 minutes from Asheville.

Tuesday, April 01, 2014

Here is Climate Change in Concrete Terms

This is something all of us will be coming to understand - food scarcity. This isn't theoretical, and there is no dispute among credible scientists. It's real, and it is happening now. Even corporate-backed repugs and dims no longer have the option of ignoring this. The thing that infuriates me is that I'm quite certain that in private, these do-nothing deniers see the writing on the wall, but for the sake of campaign contributions from industry and political support, they proclaim that human-induced climate change is all a hoax. And funding from billionaires like the Kochs helps build their disinfo campaigns.

Clearly many in government must be aware of our dire situation, based on the weapons/ammo stockpiling they are doing, and the fema camps they've built. Not to mention having military operations on domestic soil, and the militarization of local police forces nationwide. What are they getting ready for? This is probably it. Climate-induced natural disasters, coupled with widespread crop failures. Or economic collapse. And the resulting riots, looting, and breakdown of social controls.

As Richard Schiffman of The Guardian points out, there are few climate-change skeptics amongst those who grow the world's food – if any. Farmers don't have to read UN reports to know how radically their weather is changing. And consumers don't need academic studies or bullet points to know that food prices are steadily rising.

And Lester Brown of Earthwatch Institute observes that we face a looming "food crisis" not just from climate change –
there are also escalating water shortages and the conversion of
farmland to non-food uses. The vast amounts of land being used to
produce biofuels and grain to feed livestock are also cutting down on
the staple grains that people need to survive.

There has to be a global effort, a dramatic one, in order to at least slow or reduce the impact on the planet. It's probably already too late to avert widespread climate-based disasters, as they are are already happening. But perhaps the harm can be reduced by concerted, worldwide action. I guess it's pointless to dwell on what might have been if such actions had begun in earnest decades ago.

We need to begin planning how we are going to get by when the shelves at the grocery store have much less to offer. What will you do?

“In the councils of government we must guard against
the acquisition of power, whether sought or unsought,
by the military industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties and democratic processes.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower
from his final address to the nation
January 17, 1961

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
--Thomas Jefferson